Democrats are starting to settle on a price for participating in a tax-code overhaul, and many Republicans won’t want to pay it.

“Tax reform’s got to be responsible and it’s got to be progressive,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.).

Mathematical Impossibility

It’s impossible for tax reform to be progressive and responsible. That’s like asking for something to be entirely black and entirely white.

Republicans could of course simply tell the Democrats to go to hell. Math does allow that possibility. But in the Senate, there can be at most two defections.

Paul Ryan wants a Border Adjustment Tax (BAT), but that is unlikely to make it through the Senate.

And any progressive ideas to bring Democrats on board will likely be at the expense of the same group of House Republicans rRepublicans who sunk Obamacare.

Congress may pass something, but don’t expect meaningful reform.

In regards to Obamacare, House Republicans were their own worst enemy. Despite a 240-194 edge, House Republicans could not come to an agreement. It would not have mattered if they did because the bill would not have survived the Senate.

Republicans still haven’t given up on Obamacare, but unless they want to repeal it and start over, there is actually little to be gained from messing with it. Why bother?

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The normal way to play the game is for a new President to accomplish some things, and then when the economy doesn’t roar, the new President loses popularity, and loses seats in the mid-term election. Maybe the idea here is to aim for the reverse. Accomplish nothing, but blame the other party, and groups within your own party, and then try to get mid-term gains.

“but but the CEOs were SO confident (in the great Trump Reflation) ….”

I’m sure only in their public personas. I suspect that unlike most of the voting public, they are well aware of the farce of voter control and “Change You Can Believe In” candidates. The Deep State maintains the status quo as it always has as clearly revealed in the 2014 Princeton University study I’ve posted here before. The stock market went up… because it went up. The trading algorithms played upon the market psychology set by the reform farce.

As far as Trump cutting the budgets from some fed agencies while raising DOD funding by $54B, I haven’t seen a balance sheet anywhere showing the savings vs any additional spending. Also, as interest rates rise, the interest on the national debt will be rising, too. It will take some really huge cuts just to compensate for that and since any real (i.e., free market) fix in the segment where the greatest potential cost savings lie, health care, are impossible due to the Deep State component of a lobbyist owned government, forget that.

So, the farce of reform finds it’s only possible to drain an ocean sized swamp with a straw.

I’m not giving them that much credit. Some, perhaps … but most are dead wrong.

By personal pinata (SD called for 6% yield on the 10yr):

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller shared his views on the election and the market in an exclusive interview Thursday with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

On the election: “I’m very hopeful and optimistic on what it means. … The fears of protectionism, while valid, are greatly oversized relative to the benefits to the other parts of the economy [from deregulation and tax reform],” he said.

He added, “This economy is so over regulated and people are just drowning in red tape, that the removal of that, and I’m expecting serious tax reform, cuts to the corporate tax rate. … So I’m quite, quite optimistic on the economy.”

On gold: “I sold all my gold the night of the election. All the reasons I owned it for the last couple years, it seems to me they may be ending,” he said.

On how he is investing now: “I have a large bet on economic growth. … I’m short bonds globally. … I’m short U.S. bonds [due to stronger future growth]. I like the sectors of the equity market that respond to growth [like] value and materials, not things like staples or traditional growth stocks. … I really like the [U.S.] dollar, particularly against the euro.”

Art Laffer is wrong about trickle down economics but he’s not wrong about the Laffer curve. Lowering taxes on the productive class will indeed increase productivity and the corresponding deficits this creates will put money in the hands of private sector debtors who will pay down private debt. It will also shrink bank balance sheets and shift political power to the productive class away from the FIRE sector. So it may not happen.

Why can’t they at least agree on elimination deductions (like mortgage interest) and implement a simple income tax form like virtually EVERY other nation on the planet uses? In most countries the government does your taxes for you and just sends a form outlining everything and stating what you owe (or are owed) that you can then easily amend if you need to.

Let’s at least agree on simplifying the tax system even if we can’t agree on lowering taxes!! This whole idea of purposefully maintaining a complicated tax filing regime in order to make people angry with taxes is just ridiculous. Simplified tax filings don’t mean that people are suddenly happy with paying taxes.

“Let’s at least agree on simplifying the tax system even if we can’t agree on lowering taxes!!”

Gosh, now all you’ll need to do is convince those many who benefit from the current system and have paid much money and effort to bring it to the way it currently is to agree with you. It will be like herding a very large number of cats who all really dislike you.

“If only,” “if only,” “this only makes sense.” It is so funny to me what people think they can get from a totally dysfunctional system that provides, except on the most intimate small town local level, taxation without representation. Hmmm, where have I heard that before?

Reagan did that, and it all got undone. David Stockman, Reagan’s first budget director, wrote a good first book showing how it happened; though he seems to have suffered amnesia since then, and needs to reread his own 1980s book. Got rid of agricultural subsidies, too, but they all got voted back in before they got taken away. As one senator quoted in the book said: You only rented my vote for this one time, and I will vote to undo it all after your headline victory. So, beware of any reform or simplification schemes, as they will be Beltway Frauds and Fakes.

Tax code wrangling is a function of the House of Representatives and the House has been in control of the Republican Party for the better part of 20 years. It’s their tax code. Why would they want to change it?

However, the democrats are owned by the same group that owns the republicans. So I think they’ll find enough votes in the Senate for cutting taxes on senators and their owners.

Anyone who believes the establishment Republicans want reform (true reform, not just a shifting of communist/socialist policies to better suit their whims) is a fool. While the Republicans have “the numbers”, Constitutionally minded Republicans (there is no such thing on the Dem side) are a bleak minority.

I for one am happy that the Freedom Caucus is being as staunch as they are. This will be the best path to the breakup of the Democrat and Republican parties. Viable, reasonable, third parties need to start erecting the ground works for take over. Currently there are only single issue whack job parties.

The dems will always be 100% against anything Trump wants. So that means 10% of the pubs in the house have to switch sides for the dems to win. I would guess at least 10% of the pubs hate Trump and want him to fail on everything. They likely won’t admit it, but they do.

So would the criminal Hillary. So will every future Congress and every future president.

Government is too big to manage, and too big for the taxpayers to afford. Its going to get a lot smaller or its going to get even less effective.

No one will be effective in Congress or the White House until the government gets sufficiently “right sized”. No exceptions for GM, or Kodak, or Bethlehem Steel… no exceptions for IBM or GE. And no exceptions for the nonviable mess that is Washington DC either.

Obamacare was an obnoxious, fascist crime against humanity — and Congress is going to repeal it if they ever want public support ever again. F U to Nancy Pelosi the b!tch who thinks government mismanaged care can be forced on her employers, but she thinks she is too good for it. F U Pelosi. Witch should be in prison.

The size and scope of government is obscene, and they will have to scale it back — WAY BACK — if they want the federal government to be effective again. Otherwise, its just Greece on a few years delay.

Slash spending, and that means firing thousands THOUSANDS of useless federal bureaucrats. It was called “right sizing” when it happened to we the people. It was called scaling back when it was forced in Govt Motors (and they didn’t do enough, so they still aren’t viable).

Too many useless federal employees. Too many thugs with badges. Too much bull sh!t. Slash the size and scope down to a manageable level (a LOT smaller) — or else plan on every single Congress (both parties) to remain clogged with gridlock and partisan hatred.

Government cannot be effective at its current size. That is the real underlying problem throughout the G7, but its particularly bad in Washington.

Well, Obamacare is collapsing, with several states/counties having ZERO insurance scammers (providers?) in 2018, and many having only one state sponsored overpriced disaster. Congress, including the democrats, can’t find the money for it, and none of them want to be on it.

The most powerful military on earth can’t defeat a bunch of camel pirates, having flailed away without any coherent strategy for 16 years (2001-present). Three presidents, countless failed presidential candidates, and lost track of how many 4-star generals — still can’t come up with a coherent strategy.

Despite 50+ years of “assurances” that they will get spending under control, they haven’t. And neither party has a coherent plan to do so anytime in the next 20 years.

The EPA recently committed the largest chemical spill into the environment in the last century — three times as much chemicals released as the Exxon Valdez (see Snake river fiasco).

The enviro-terrorists of California had an impossible drought, followed by massive flooding — caused by poor irrigation policies and failure to maintain dams… they blamed cow farts instead of taking responsibility.

In dozens of states, not only are the bureaucrats screwing taxpayers out of savings, the same bureaucrats are wrecking their own pension systems.

….

I could list many more examples, but the US government is its own worst enemy. And note that neither Clinton nor Bush nor Obama could make things work (its still early, but Trump is off to an auspicious start).

Government cannot be all things to all people, any more than other entities can. Uncle Sam is the ultimate ineffective conglomerate

Oh, I agree, but not one person in a hundred can think outside of the box when it comes to government. The material that presently makes up mankind cannot be made into anything but the same stinky turds.

Still, you have to look at the bright side: man is creating two new ‘species’, artificial intelligence and man by artificial means.

We don’t have to think outside the box. Mish has yet another post today about the empty political promises — read my lips! I did not boink my intern! WMD! If you like your doctor, too bad!! Government pensions are as solid as social security!!!

Uncle Sam is a bloated conglomerate that claims it can be all things to all people. Not going to happen, no matter who is in Congress or White House or whichever governors mansion.

Uncle Sam gets much much much smaller, both in size and scope, or it continues to collapse under the weight of its own empty promises

Congress cannot work together any longer. Not for just Trump but Obama too. America is increasingly doing nothing of any good for the people. Presidents will govern by executive order which will whipsaw back and forth with each administration. Bureaucracy has reach the level of incompetence.

I believe Trump sincerely wants to do good but events and circumstances dictate a lot a president does. The Swamp has drowned many presidents regardless of their good intentions. He is turning around immigration and streamlining regulations and government agencies. That is a lot more than his predecessor did.

Good intentions mean little unless there is some minimum levels of steeliness in place once those who are benefiting from the current status quo inevitably cry and whine in public. Reagan managed to break the air traffic controller union by having enough ideological footing to see it through despite whining about starving kids. Thatcher outdid him about ten fold.

Of course neither of them were sufficiently clued in to where the real threat lay, to recognize it was Wall Street and The City that was the main problem. By far. They may perhaps be excused, since they were in power soon enough following Nixon’s final rollover, that this may have been less clear back then.

But now, nothing else really matters. The FIREL sectors, somewhere between 95 and 99% of whose members are not just non productive, but in fact straight up anti productive as they actively lay roadblocks in front of productive people to collect rent for letting anyone through; now are so overwhelmingly the main threat to Americans that nothing else even registers above the noise floor. Kim with a nuclear arsenal sharing it freely with ISIS, doesn’t even come close, as far as threats go.

Yet Toupee in Chief remain entirely clueless about this. Instead falling lock, stock and barrel for the idiocy that FIREL somehow represent “capitalism,” “free markets” and “the rule of law.” Just because those clowns by now have been handed all the money, hence have his ear, and because they say so. While Toupee lacks the intellectual and ideological foundation to see through their self serving nonsense.

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